Rate My Professor Jennifer May

Professor Jennifer May AM serves as the Betty Fyffe Chair of Rural Health and Director of the University of Newcastle Department of Rural Health (UONDRH) since 2016. She is an Adjunct Professor in the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing. With more than 25 years as a general practitioner and visiting medical officer in rural and remote areas of Australia—spanning every state and territory except South Australia—and experience in remote British Columbia, Canada, she brings extensive practical expertise to her leadership role. Dr. May earned her PhD from Monash University in 2016, focusing on rural service models and the medical workforce. She maintains an active clinical practice in Tamworth, New South Wales, at a not-for-profit general practice dedicated to enhancing rural health through recruitment, training, and service innovation, holding visiting rights at local public and private hospitals. Her contributions have been recognized with the Australia Medal (AM) in 2016 for significant service to community health in rural and regional areas as a practitioner, professional group member, and educator, as well as the Telstra Rural Doctors Association of Australia Rural Doctor of the Year award in 2014.

May's research interests center on rural health service models, medical workforce distribution and retention, palliative care, dehydration management, and cardiovascular health in rural populations. As Chief Investigator on projects like the HealthyRHearts trial, she leads efforts in telehealth-based interventions for chronic disease management. Selected publications include "The impact of telehealth-delivered Medical Nutrition Therapy on diabetes outcomes in rural general practice: A secondary analysis of the Healthy Rural Hearts randomised controlled trial" (2026), "Effectiveness and reporting of nutrition interventions in cardiac rehabilitation programmes: a systematic review" (2023), "HealthyRHearts—reducing cholesterol in rural adults via telehealth-based medical nutrition therapy: protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial" (2023), and book chapters such as "The challenge of health inequalities in rural and remote Australia" (2011). She has held prominent roles including co-chair of the Medical Workforce Reform Advisory Committee (2021–2023), Chair of the Federation of Australian Rural Medical Educators (2020–2022), past Chair of the National Rural Health Alliance and the Rural Doctors Association of Australia Female Doctors Group. May advises the Australian Government Department of Health on specialist training, rural workforce policy, and clinical matters, overseeing inter-professional education programs involving thousands of student placements annually to foster rural health careers. Her work has established UONDRH as a leader in rural longitudinal immersion training and workforce research.